“In all of our lives, in all of our experiences, marijuana, except in some instances for medical marijuana, marijuana has been illegal. You go to Colorado now and everything you thought about it is turned upside-down. It’s legal. It’s mind-blowing. You go into a warehouse and it’s a huge warehouse full of marijuana plants. And one we visited for our story is right across the street from a police station. You can smell it when you’re driving by. You can smell the marijuana in the air. And it’s all legal.”

“60 Minutes” producer Marc Lieberman notes that puns are an occupational hazard when covering the marijuana business — as Coloradans are painfully aware after a year’s worth of national media attention to the story.

This week, at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, Al Jazeera America examines “A Year on Pot,” including a day in the life of Denver Post editors and reporters on The Cannabist team. The documentary is one of a growing stash of films chronicling Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana one year ago.

On the scale of recent journalistic explorations by CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and others, this Al Jazeera “America Tonight” effort is more critical of the state’s shift and more interested in warning of potential dangers. The Wednesday night segment in particular focuses on THC-poisoning from edibles, the rise of dabbing and resulting burns, underage weed abuse and driving under the influence. The film also makes do with lower production values.

Harry Smith returns to his Colorado stomping grounds to explore “Marijuana Country: The Cannabis Boom” on CNBC, a one-hour documentary sizing up the state one year after legalization.

Smith covers pot as a treatment for seizures in children (“Charlotte’s Web”), the trouble with dosing edibles, the problem of enforcing zero tolerance in the workplace, the black market, the big businesses hoping to franchise, and sales stats in general — all with a critical eye.

Most of these topics have been chronicled extensively by local and national media (The Cannabist reports 9 percent of the state’s population can be considered regular users and counts $573 million in pot sales for 10 months of 2014), but the attention to underground sales is insightful. Those making deals without legal sanctions call it “donating” and “caregiving,” not buying and selling, Smith notes. Those who choose to avoid dispensaries and call a dealer, er, “caregiver,” spend about one-third the cost of legal recreational weed.

An outsider taking a peek might conclude there has been no disaster, none of the predicted chaos, in Colorado since legalization. The state seems to be finding its way. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper tells CNBC, “When you’re doing this for the first time, there’s no template.”

Like much about the marijuana experiment in Colorado, the caliber of TV reporting on the subject has matured over the past year. Sure, the latest documentary includes images of smoke-filled Civic Center Park and celebrants hooting at a 4/20 fest. But it also features a high-powered lunch at The Palm with gangapreneurs making deals. Since legalization brought international media to the state a year ago, the quality of coverage of the upstart industry has improved.

No longer confined to quick hits filled with pot puns, shots of leafy plants, thick buds and mountains of cash, the latest pot documentary, “Pot Barons of Colorado” on MSNBC airing Sunday nights (with a sneak peak on Nov. 28), probes the financials in a new way.

Comedian Joe Rogan returns to Comedy Central Nov. 21 in a one-hour special filmed at the downtown Denver Comedy Works. His affection for Denver and, particularly, for the city’s newfound embrace of legal recreational weed, are recurring themes.

His point is, if you’re not paranoid, you’re not paying attention.

On the subject of marijuana, he riffs about the discomfort of eating a pot cookie and boarding an airplane. “Getting paranoid? That’s the best part. We’re on a giant ball that’s spinning in space and nobody talks about it!… We’re spinning in infinity and it doesn’t come up.”

Because legalized recreational marijuana has created a boom not only in the weed industry but in the weed TV documentary (or pot-doc) industry, another six-parter is coming our way this month. MSNBC premieres “Pot Barons of Colorado” on Sunday, Nov. 30 at 8 p.m. (A “sneak peak” airs Nov. 28 at 10 p.m.)

This pot-umentary follows Colorado-based entrepreneurs who are cashing in on the “green rush.”

The names are by now familiar: Jamie Perino, owner of Euflora; Andy and Pete Williams, owners of Medicine Man, one of the largest single-store marijuana dispensaries in the world; and Tripp Keber of Dixie Elixirs, a marijuana soda that comes in fancy brushed-aluminum bottles.

Their plans for franchises and empire building are explored, along with the dangers of the cash-only business (picture footage of armed security guards and piles of bills). The series was produced by MSNBC’s Long Form Unit and Triple Threat TV.

From left, Ryan Luck, manager Pete Vasquez, president Andy Williams, chief operating officer Pete Williams and Nelson Figueiredo are checking the computer by the register of recreational-marijuana at Medicine Man marijuana dispensary on New Years day morning. Denver, Colorado. January 1, 2014. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

TruTV has a series in the works chronicling the Colorado family behind the Medicine Man marijuana dispensaries. Working title: “Medicine Man.”

The series, from Flame Ventures and Wilshire Studios, has Tony Krantz (“24,” “Felicity”) as executive producer on the pilot. “We’ve been in places and seen things that people would have been arrested for only a short while ago,” says Krantz said in a release. “This is a moment in our nation’s history just like the end of prohibition, and we’re telling the story of one family at the center of all of it. This is a fascinating and timely story of a new American Dream.”

Seems America can’t get enough of Colorado’s experiment with legalized recreational pot. The docuseries will focus on the family dynasty, led by Andy Williams, “demonstrating that the people at the center of the legal marijuana industry are a far cry from the stoner stereotypes.”

Medicine Man has a 40,000-square-foot industrial cultivation facility used for growing their award-winning product, employs 75 people across its various divisions, and is in construction on its first satellite outpost in nearby Aurora, Colo. The company estimates its value at $11.5 million, according to Denver Post reports.

Weed is in the air this May sweeps. Expect marijuana coverage from all major Denver TV news outlets.

Because Colorado is the center of the recreational pot universe, home to an historic shift not seen since Prohibition, because the sales and consumption of weed make for lively visuals, because the medical, legal, cultural and financial angles are abundant, and with a number of national networks and documentary crews swarming the story (not to mention The Denver Post’s website The Cannabist), it’s a natural. The depth of coverage, or lack thereof, will offer insight into each local news shop.

CBS4 is first in line, taking a look at edibles: today at 6 p.m. Alan Gionet reports on the science behind how THC from edibles is ingested. Tonight at 10 p.m., Rick Sallinger goes undercover “to learn what pot shops are really telling customers when they buy edibles and whether the information is accurate.” Then Friday at 10 p.m., Brian Maass wraps it up with a report on “what’s really inside edibles including sometimes harmful bacteria and pesticides.”

The Cannabist, The Denver Post’s offshoot website dedicated to marijuana coverage, will be the subject of a forthcoming feature-length documentary from the Denver Documentary Collective. The film “Rolling Papers,” a chronicle of Colorado’s cannibis culture, is currently in production. Producers will launch a Kickstarter campaign this week.

The Kickstarter campaign will be unveiled online on 4/20 to finance the effort. (The 4/20 celebration, long the high holiday of the pot legalization movement, is expected to draw the biggest crowd ever in Denver this year.)

The “Rolling Papers” team: director Mitch Dickman and director of photography Zachary Armstrong of Listen Productions and producers Britta Erickson, Daniel Junge, Karl Kister, Alison Greenberg Millice and Katie Shapiro. Junge and Greenberg Millice previously won the Academy Award for best documentary short in 2012 for “Saving Face,” about brutal acid attacks on women in Pakistan.

For info about the Kickstarter campaign and to support the project check the film’s website. “Rolling Papers” is slated for completion this fall.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.